This Day In History Thread: Because We Need One?

[Gwynfrid]

November 28, 1893: New Zealand women are the world's first to vote in a national election. However, they won't become eligible to Parliament until after WWI.

[Aedilred]

28th November

November 28, 1893: New Zealand women are the world's first to vote in a national election. However, they won't become eligible to Parliament until after WWI.

Coincidentally, today is also the anniversary of the first election of a sitting woman MP to Parliament in Britain, Lady Astor, in 1919. Countess Markievicz had previously been elected as MP, but refused to take up her seat, as abstentionism was Irish nationalist policy at the time.

1169 - Death of Owain ap Gruffudd, King of Gwynnedd, who claimed the title King of Wales, but was also the first Prince of Wales, a title which proved rather more durable and is still in use today (albeit without any temporal significance).

1660 - Foundation of the Royal Society in London by a group of eminent natural philosophers. During the Society's peak period, during the later Stuart era, it included luminaries like Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Denis Papin, John Locke, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Gottfried Leibniz, and of course Isaac Newton and was arguably the leading centre of natural philosophy in the world.

1972 - The last executions are held in France, by guillotine. Bad luck, French criminals, I'm out by five years.

[Gwynfrid]

1972 - The last executions are held in France, by guillotine.

This one is inaccurate. Those were the last executions in Paris. The last execution in France was in 1977, in Marseille, 4 years before the death penalty was abolished.

[Aedilred]

This one is inaccurate. Those were the last executions in Paris. The last execution in France was in 1977, in Marseille, 4 years before the death penalty was abolished.

Oh, you're right; silly me. I shall eliminate it as the reduced status of this fact is insufficiently important for my inane trivia collection.

[rs2excelsior]

Coincidentally, today is also the anniversary of the first election of a sitting woman MP to Parliament in Britain, Lady Astor, in 1919. Countess Markievicz had previously been elected as MP, but refused to take up her seat, as abstentionism was Irish nationalist policy at the time.

Even more coincidentally, Lady Astor was born in my hometown. Right here in a small town in rural Virginia.

November 28
1520: Ferdinand Magellan's ships reach the Pacific Ocean after rounding the southern tip of South America, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
1814: The Times in London is printed on German-built, steam-powered, automatic presses for the first time.
{scrubbed}

[Shekinah]

November 29, 1972: Atari announces the release of Pong, the first commercially successful video game.

[Killer Angel]

nov. 29, 1864: how could we forget the Sand Creek massacre?

[dehro]

1961 The chimp Enos travels twice around the world and returns safely to earth. the spacecraft Mercury is cleared for manned orbital flight.
1958 Michael Dempsey, bass player for the Cure is born
1981 actress Natalie Wood dies tragically, in circumstances that have led to numerous speculations and several inquiries.

[Aedilred]

November 29th

561 - Death of Chlothar I, second king of all the Franks. Late November was apparently not a good time to be a Merovingian.

1330 - Execution of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, who had ruled as regent and dictator of England since his overthrow and probable murder of his former friend Edward II in 1327 before being in turn overthrown in a coup by the young king. Historians remain divided on his motives, abilities and legacy.

1338 - Birth of Lionel of Antwerp to King Edward III of England. Probably the most capable and intelligent of Edward's sons who survived to adulthood, his death at the age of just twenty-nine (rumoured poisoned by his father-in-law) helped start the rumours that the Dukedom of Clarence was cursed, while the complex dynastic politics that resulted from his daughter's marriage - to the grandson of the above Roger Mortimer - were a major factor to the disaster of Richard II's reign and the Wars of the Roses.

1682 - Death of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, best known for his command of the royalist army in the first English Civil War, also a prolific inventor, mathematical prodigy, artist, and, less creditably, one of the key figures in establishing England's role in the Atlantic slave trade, towards the end of the last era when it was possible to be a leading figure in so many fields. Coincidentally, his death fell on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of his father, Elector Palatine Frederick I and King of Bohemia, in 1632.

[Aolbain]

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[Aolbain]

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[veti]

3 December 1894: Death (in Samoa) of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish author who created virtually all the 20th-century tropes associated with "pirates".

1927: The first movie starring the double act of Laurel and Hardy is released. The duo go on to make over 100 films.

1984: The world's worst ever industrial accident: a release of gas from a Union Carbide pesticide plant at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, kills a number of people variously estimated at anything up to 16,000, and injures half a million more.

[Neli42]

Am I in a time warp? I'd swear it's not the 3rd yet.
2 December

1777 - Lydia Darragh, a Philadelphia nurse, overhears British General William Howe planning a surprise attack on Washington's army at Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania two days later. She passes the intelligence to the American army, which is then quite unsurprised.

1804 - Pope Pius VII crowns Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, in Notre Dame Cathedral. Well, technically, Napoleon crowned himself, as he took the crown from the pope's hands and placed it on his own head.

1859 - John Brown, the militant US abolitionist, is hanged for treason, insurrection, and murder. Before his sentence was carried out he wrote "The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

1959 - The Malpasset Dam in France collapses. The ensuing flood devastates the port city of Frejus - standing since it was built by Roman Emperor Caesar - and kills 412 people.

[Aedilred]

[SIZE=3][COLOR="#0000FF"]
Am I in a time warp? I'd swear it's not the 3rd yet.

Depends where in the world you are.

2nd December

1805 - Napoleon defeats a joint Austro-Russian army at the Battle of Austerlitz, his most glorious victory. The Third Coalition is destroyed, and Austria is forced to sue for peace, a peace which includes the final abolition of the Holy Roman Empire, and Napoleon's marriage to the Emperor's daughter.

1848 - Following the Revolutions of 1848 which saw the ousting of Metternich, the dominant figure of post-Napoleonic Austria (and arguably Europe), and the deposition of the incapable Emperor Ferdinand II, the young Franz Josef I becomes Emperor of Austria. He will become one of the longest-reigning of all European monarchs, finally dying in 1916 during World War I.

1851 - Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, President of France, launches a coup which overthrows the short-lived Second Republic.

1852 - Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of the French, as Napoleon III.

[Scarlet Knight]

During the night of December 2, 1984, the Bhopal disaster occurs at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant . Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, causing the death of thousands.

@v Oh, bleep! Sorry guys...

[factotum]

Veti already did that one...

3rd December 1992: Two IRA bombs explode in central Manchester, causing millions of pounds worth of damage and injuring 65 people (mostly lightly, thankfully).

[dehro]

Ozzy Osbourne turns 666 today... bats all around the world are a little worried.

[veti]

4 December 1872: the unremarkable cargo ship Mary Celeste is found near the Azores, abandoned for no obvious reason, giving rise to hundreds of works of speculative fiction.

1975: death of Hannah Arendt, the Jewish-German-American philosopher and historian who coined the phrase "the banality of evil" in the context of her studies of Nazis in general (and Adolf Eichmann in particular).

[dehro]

Doodle insists on pointing out that in 1895, Anna Freud was born, youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud and a part of the history of psychoanalysis in her own right

[Killer Angel]

4 december, 771: after the death of his brother, Charlemagne becomes king of the whole Frankish Kingdom.

[Shekinah]

December 4, 1980: Led Zeppelin officially disbands, following the death of John Bonham on September 25.

[Gwynfrid]

December 4, 1851: In Paris, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte suppresses the workers' rebellion against the coup he staged, two days earlier, in order to stay in power in spite of Second Republic constitution's term limit. The army attacks the barricades set up by the insurgents in the streets of Paris, killing about 400 people. In total, about 25000 will be arrested, sealing Bonaparte's power.

December 4, 1918: US president Woodrow Wilson sails to France to participate in the Paris Peace Conference. This is the first trip to Europe for a sitting US president. He will spend a total of 6 months there, being one of the three key players in the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Versailles.

[Aolbain]

December 4, 1259: To end French support to his rebellious vassals, Henry III of England gives up all his continental possessions, including his ancestral lands in Normandy, to Louis IX.

1676: Swedish and Danish forces clashes outside of Lund, leaving 9000 of the involved 21000 soldiers dead in the bloodiest battle in Scandinavian history. This marks the effective end of the danish attempt to reclaim eastern Denmark (modern-day southern Sweden) and reinforces the position of Karl XI of Sweden, leaving him to carry out his remaining reign without the support of parliament or the Privy Council.

1971: McGurk's Bar, an catholic hangout in Belfast, is bombed by the unionist Ulster Volunteer Force. The attack results in 15 dead (including at least one child) and 17 injured.

[Asta Kask]

You forgot the most important fact about the Danes - that they are perfidious.

[Xuc Xac]

4 December, 1971 : Some stupid with a flare gun burned the Montreux casino to the ground.

[Neli42]

5 December 1945

After four hours of confused radio transmissions, Flight 19, consisting of fourteen men aboard five US Naval bombers, disappears somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida coast. A thirteen-man search and rescue mission is dispatched an hour after Flight 19's last transmission is received. It, too, goes missing. No trace is ever found of the 27 men and six aircraft. This incident, which comes to be known as "The Lost Squadron," solidifies the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.

[Shekinah]

December 5, 1901: Walt Disney is born.

[Asta Kask]

Am I in a time warp? I'd swear it's not the 3rd yet.

Maybe you are in a time warp. Again.

[Shekinah]

To add to today's births, Hilary Koprowski, creator of the polio vaccine was born in 1916. She died just last year.

<Insert snarky comment about subverting Polish stereotypes here>

[Spiryt]

Not sure about stereotypes, but I'm pretty sure that he wasn't actually 'she'.